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What should you think about when hiring an ecommerce web designer? It’s easy to find a designer who can make your business look pretty. But if you have an online shop, “pretty” doesn’t pay the bills. You need an ecommerce web designer that understands strategy and sales.
You may wonder what makes Aeolidia different from other design studios. We’re pretty different! Here are some things that make our work at Aeolidia game-changing for our clients.
1) A data-based strategy for each individual shop
We base our design decisions on your real data. We work to improve your conversion rate, customer retention, and average sale amount.
Our Web Analyst will dig into your Shopify and Google Analytics stats before we begin. She will analyze your website’s effectiveness and pinpoint areas to improve. She will gather info on who’s shopping and how they find you.
We then get together behind the scenes with a full team to review and refine a strategic plan. Our strategy is always based on what we know about your business, customers, and your goals.
If you don’t already have a website, we are still able to get strategic, based on your Etsy information, what you’ve learned selling in-person or our general knowledge of your industry.
We also check back in after launch to go through your stats to analyze the effectiveness of our work. At this point, we will suggest improvements and help you increase sales even more.
2) A full-service studio with a team-based approach
Your dedicated project manager and a team of four to ten Aeolidians will be tight for the length of your project. Your designer will collaborate with your developer. Your copywriter will chat with your designer. Your photographer will learn from your marketing consultant. Aeolidia is a team from start to finish!
There’s a lot of content to gather and create for an ecommerce website. It can be messy to coordinate these things between third parties. That’s why we have a copywriter, a product photographer, an SEO strategist, a web analyst, and a marketing consultant on our team.
We remove the problem of juggling different timelines and deadlines between creatives. We identify your needs and make a plan that is our responsibility to schedule and carry out.
If you think it sounds more expensive to hire a full-service agency instead of a solo designer or a designer and developer team, there’s a false economy to have an expert in one area do crucial work outside their area of expertise.
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Our teams are more than the sum of their parts. Not only do you get your own personal team of experts in individual (and vital) areas of building out a website, we collaborate and challenge each other. We each do our best and most thorough work for Aeolidia, because we work together.
Your Aeolidia team may consist of a:
- Project coordinator
- Marketing consultant
- Logo and/or web designer
- Web developer
- Copywriter
- Product photographer
- Web analyst
- SEO strategist
When each of these experts can make a plan together at the start of your project, and be involved throughout to collaborate and adjust, results are outstandingly cohesive and goals-focused.
Our project coordinator will keep everything running on time and with a constant eye on the big picture. We know you can’t afford to miss a deadline or miss the mark on aiming toward a goal. Knowing that we are tracking each to-do and due date is a lifesaver for a busy business owner.
3) A deep understanding of ecommerce for creative business
We only work with creative product-based gift shops and lifestyle brands. We only create online shops, and we only use Shopify. This narrow focus has led to mastery.
Our work is goals-based and custom to each client. We ask a lot of questions and get to know your positioning and your customer before any design work begins. We’ve worked with many businesses like yours and what you do makes perfect sense to us.
We excel at working for graphic designer clients. Our clients are creatives, and we can design and communicate for you in a way that feels exactly right.
4) An effective and distraction-proof process
We excel at clearing a path to your success. Our system keeps things moving even when life and business get in the way of your project tasks. Our clients tell us over and over again how glad they were that we kept them on track and didn’t let deadlines slip.
5) An insistence on transformative work
We don’t do incremental change. Our work is transformative. Making little tweaks or taking your web presence only as far as 90% isn’t going to move you far enough along. We find that the biggest change for a business happens between 90% and 100%—getting things exactly right is what makes your business a force to be reckoned with.
We’re not yes-men, and in fact will respectfully disagree with you when needed. If a choice or idea of yours will take you farther away from your goals, it’s off the table. We don’t base decisions on personal preferences (ours or yours), instead focusing on your customer’s needs.
6) A high price tag
Wait, is that a good thing? It is! Your team of Aeolidians will put a vast amount of time and effort toward your success. Your project is not a casual matter for us: the bar is set high. You expect a solid return on your investment, and your team will be striving to meet that goal.
We do completely custom work for growing businesses (though we also can start with an existing design theme if your needs are simple).
A blank white page + your unique business and goals = your website will be a tool built just for you.
When you’re quoted a low price from a designer, ask yourself how the price is possible. How much time can they devote to strategy, research, and exploration? How important is it to your designer that you reach your goals?
Our projects start at $9,000, go up from there, and are a bargain when you consider how they’ll help your business grow.
Some other things that set us apart as an ecommerce web designer
- You can see the success of our clients. Our past clients have hit goal after goal.
- Our wealth of knowledge is accelerated by working with 50+ clients a year.
- We learn about the big picture that goes into running a business, even the parts we don’t deal with day to day.
- Everyone on our team consistently strives to make a difference for our clients.
- We track every to-do, deadline, and piece of content, so you won’t stress about the calendar.
- Aeolidia is a black woman-owned business, and we’re easy to talk to, while confident in our expertise. We know you know your stuff, too.
- We’re one of the few studios offering an intermediate solution between beginner and enterprise. If you’re in our “small but growing” sweet spot, we’re a smart pick.
- Your success is our success. We’ll be your team for life, consistently improving and maintaining your website with you month over month.
The Usual Path to Hiring Aeolidia
Aeolidia is known for transforming businesses, and we are often a key player in rebranding or redesigning existing businesses. This is the path many of our clients take to hiring us:
Phase 1: They launch, usually investing under $600 in an ecommerce site that they put together themselves or someone helped them set up.
Phase 2: They improve their business and marketing skills and get to a point with their brand where they realize their site does not differentiate them or resonate with their target customer. They pay a designer $2k – $6k for a semi- custom site (such as making adjustments to an existing design theme). This is often more of a facelift without strategy or increased functionality.
Phase 3: Their business has grown and they have gotten savvy enough to understand that their site could be doing a ton more for them. They have frustrations and their customers have frustrations. They have a lot on their plate and need expertise in many areas. They are more than ready for Aeolidia.
The other, equally valid path we see people taking is that they are just starting out but they have funds for their business and high standards for either design or strategy or both. Their product is unproven but they want to give it the best chance possible. We help them skip over phase 1 and 2, that awkward “teenage” phase of business that is easy to get mired in.
Won’t you please get in touch here and we can work together to make your business all that it can be?
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1 thought on “Hiring an Ecommerce Web Designer”
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The Shopify websites we design have a reputation for substantial improvements to ecommerce conversion rates and online sales. Let's talk!
I am currently in the process of re-designing my web site with a designer. A week after signing on the dotted line, I attended a presentation you, Arianne gave. If I had heard you earlier I would have jumped on board in a heartbeat (even though my designer is really good and it would have been more expensive with you).
Why?
This is the third time I am redesigning my web site (technology keeps changing) and it is very personal! What I found I need is a solid partner that listens to my point of view, but since I am often “too close for my own good,” I need someone I can trust with a different point of view. For me, trust comes from seeing someone doing the foundation work, and having knowledge and experience in my field.
Also, in my previous life, I was a UI person in a software company. Developers would walk up to me and ask “how should I call this command?” and I would think “this is like you remodeling your whole house and then asking the interior designer, what color the lamp should be?” I believe the best design comes from establishing a clear bigger picture, and only then implementing the details. From what I heard, your company has a similar point of view. So it might cost more but you gain a clear big picture, which is BIG 🙂